Suns can make some headlines

[GMATCa]

I just hate the fact that this team is always one of the first teams out of the playoffs year in year out, and thus has a shit end of the lottery picks. Granted I think Warren and Booker will be solid, and Len is ok. But if you're going to miss the playoffs you might as well suck and get a top 5 pick, otherwise you are in basketball purgatory in the doldrums.

... especially when it happens year after year. To think that the Suns have missed the playoffs six times in the last seven seasons, and that in five of those six years, they have drafted thirteenth or fourteenth ... unbelievable. With one exception, Phoenix has not even been drafting in the top twelve! The strategic thinking, to the extent that there has been some, has proved atrocious.

At least a top-ten pick gives you some hope of landing premier talent. For instance, Phoenix drafted both Shawn Marion (with a selection acquired from Dallas in exchange for Steve Nash in 1998) and Amare Stoudemire ninth overall. But with one exception, the Suns have not even been landing a top-twelve pick in recent ytears. You are talking about the worst of both worlds ...

The Colangelos were not perfect and made their share of mistakes (for instance, not bringing back Danny Ainge as a player after the 1995 season and inking Luc Longley, Tom Gugliotta, and Anfernee Hardaway in 1999), but they were strategic thinkers. Again, their strategic thinking could be flawed, but they did not just muddle through matters, either. I certainly cannot imagine them being content with the combination of fringe lottery picks and non-playoff appearances for almost all of a two-term presidency.

 

[GMATCa]

Agree with a lot of what you said, but on a few things:

I refuse to put a positive spin on anything involving Dragic. He was a great fit here, known as a team player until PHX, and was run out of town. Saying we got Knight in a terrific salvaging of value misses the bigger point: the Suns mismanagement created a need to salvage a disaster. Hard to give them points for creating a stinking turd and polishing it a little at the end.

The Isaiah Thomas fiasco was just awful. It'd be one thing to keep him after Dragic left, but he was gone in the blink of an eye. What was his purpose? To disrupt the chemistry of the team?

I see what the FO is apparently trying to do, but it requires landing a huge FA in the off-season. They have the supporting cast to be contenders the moment that happens. They tried this year, but the big yield was Tyson Chandler, which is a joke (so far as adding that big stud). That's on the GM.

Actually, I rather agree with you about dumping Thomas, especially since—unlike Dragic—he wanted to remain in Phoenix and proved shocked by the trade. If the Suns had Thomas right now, they would have probably won at least a couple more games and would possess a better shot at that eighth seed. He would have taken Ronnie Price's minutes (and then some), and he fits the role of Sixth Man—a spark plug off the bench who can make things happen offensively. Thomas was, and would still be, Phoenix's best half-court penetrator and pick-and-roll guard, he reaches the free throw line, and he brings energy and creativity. He is far from a perfect offensive point guard, and his lack of size renders him a defensive liability, but those shortcomings can be partially mitigated in a bench role.

I believe that Dragic forced himself out of town. I do concur that the Suns misread matters and overloaded the system by signing Thomas and that they they may have compounded the problem by trading him after dumping Dragic. Two point guards can work well together, but three risks creating too much of an imbalance. As an organization, the Suns actually went through a three-point guard dilemma when they played Jason Kidd, Kevin Johnson, and Steve Nash as part of the rotation during the '97-'98 season. Phoenix convinced Johnson not to retire in the summer of 1997, but although the Suns offered Nash to his hometown Vancouver Grizzlies in exchange for the fourth pick at the time of the draft, they later refused to trade Nash to Cleveland as part of the three-team Antonio McDyess deal a few months later. Eventually, the Cavaliers accepted Phoenix shooting guard Wesley Person instead of Nash.

Unlike the situation last year, the three Phoenix point guards back then all accepted their roles and worked together smoothly, and the team won 56 games in '97-'98. Still, one wonders if that roster may not have been better balanced with Person instead of Nash. The Suns went 15-2 (.882) that season when Johnson played at least 30 minutes, but he wound up in a reduced role that—based on Phoenix's record when he played more minutes—probably limited the team's upside. The Suns had never ranked lower than seventh in Offensive Rating, or points scored per possession, over the previous nine seasons with Johnson, but they fell to twelfth in '97-'98 despite enjoying the deepest roster in the NBA.

Of course, the Suns had their reasons for keeping Nash. Kidd had missed 22 games the previous season with a broken collarbone, and Johnson had a history of injuries. Sure enough, in '97-'98, K.J. ended up missing 31 games due to arthroscopic knee surgery. Moreover, the Suns loved Nash and foresaw a future starting back-court of Nash and Kidd, with Nash defending the opposing point guard and Kidd defending the opposing shooting guard. But the result was that Phoenix convinced Johnson to postpone his retirement yet then reduced his role, dropping the Suns from elite offensive status and costing the team a shot at the best record in the NBA. Moreover, even with Johnson departing after the 1998 season, Nash—who had started 9 games after the All-Star break and the Suns' final playoff game as well—forced a trade by refusing to sign a contract extension. He did not want to play behind and alongside Kidd; he wanted to run his own team. Keep in mind, by the way, that Nash and Goran Dragic share the same agent: Bill Duffy. Indeed, there is a reasonable chance that even if Phoenix had not inked Isiah Thomas, Dragic would have wanted to run his own team as the clear-cut point guard and would have left as a free agent in 2015, anyway. (Dragic made this point at the time of the trade, although we do not know if matters would have really played out that way had Thomas never come on board.)

So trying, in '14-'15, to find enough opportunities for three starting-caliber point guards in the same playing rotation may have constituted a strategic mistake, one that the Suns had arguably made before. And McDonough and company may have decided that rather than continue down that path after acquiring Knight, they would remove the possibility of another logjam by trading Thomas. However, Knight really is not a point guard—even in Milwaukee, when the Bucks were trying to use him as a point guard, he did not strike me as that kind of player—and so a logjam may have never materialized. And the Suns would not have needed to play all three guards simultaneously. Even if Bledsoe and Knight averaged 35 minutes between the two of them, there still would have been 26 minutes per game for Thomas without any three-guard lineups. Of course, in that scenario, there would have been no time for Booker, Goodwin, or anyone else at guard.

In short, the Suns would be a better team with Thomas still aboard, especially given that there is no real offensive point guard off the bench right now. I do understand the Suns' reasoning behind shedding Thomas, and that decision could pay dividends eventually. But the trade may have been premature.

However, I still believe that the Suns are better off with Knight as opposed to Dragic, simply because of the age difference. Phoenix is not ready to win at a high rate right now—and possibly for the foreseeable future. Knight's age creates a greater window, and I would rather have Brandon Knight at ages twenty-four through twenty-eight than Goran Dragic from ages twenty-nine through thirty-three. There may not end up being a huge difference between these players over the next four or five seasons, but as a rule of thumb, there is more value in the guy who is twenty-four through twenty-eight—especially when one accounts for defense.

 

[GMATCa]

Additionally, while Dragic still possesses good speed and quickness, Knight is elite in that regard. In the fourth quarter of the win at Chicago last week, Jimmy Butler—one of the best and most athletic defenders in the NBA (he currently ranks second in Defensive Real Plus-Minus among shooting guards)—just could not stay in front of Knight, either off ball-screens or in isolation. (Knight scored 17 in the quarter to spearhead the comeback.) That kind of quickness is a real weapon, and although Knight is still working on his consistency, he has greater room to grow than Dragic, who peaked two years ago.